Illiberal Liberalism: A Genealogy

Furedi, Frank

doi:10.53483/wckt3541

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We also suggest that the unwavering allegiance to an imagined consensus on the matter of Covid-19 science and policy may be another instance of "illiberal liberalism", a re-enactment of an old, elite fear of public opinion by a liberal, privileged class, overrepresented in academic circles (Furedi 2022) and premised on the self-serving assumption that ordinary people, unlike "experts", lack the capacities of rational thought, free reasoning, and ethical behaviour, and must therefore be "nudged" towards the "correct" cognitions and actions (Thaler and Sunstein 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Trust Us - We Are the (Covid-19 Misinformation) Experts: A critical scoping review of expert meanings of ‘misinformation’ in the Covid era

Chaufan,

Hemsing,

Heredia

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Since the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic, prominent social actors and institutions have warned about the threat of misinformation, i.e., false or misleading information, calling on the public to join in a global crusade against it. However, neither the premises underlying expert claims nor the standards that experts use to identify truth from falsehood have been appraised. Objectives: We conducted a critical scoping review of the medical and social scientific literature, examining what this literature means by misinformation. Methods: We followed the framework of Arksey and O’Malley for scoping reviews informed by the critical perspective of the “what is the problem represented to be” approach to policy analysis. Medical sources were identified from PubMed and from three medical journals - the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine – and social science sources were identified from the journal Social Science & Medicine and from within refereed publications of self-identified and socially recognized “misinformation experts”, using a specified combination of search terms (e.g., “covid-19”; “misinformation”). Data were charted independently by two researchers. The protocol was registered in Open Science Frame. Findings: Across the data, we found that verifiability relied largely on the claims of socially recognized epistemic authorities to the exclusion of independent evidentiary standards. Further, “epistemic authority” did not depend on subject matter expertise, but rather on a new type of “expertise” - in misinformation itself. Finally, policy solutions to the alleged threat that misinformation poses to democracy and human rights called for, paradoxically, suppressing information unverified, and debate unmanaged, by experts, in the name of protecting democracy and rights. Notably, we identified no pockets of resistance to these dominant meanings and uses. Conclusions: We assess the implications of our findings for democratic public policy, and for fundamental rights and freedoms. The study is part of a larger project examining geopolitics, medicalization, and social control in the Covid era.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Trust Us - We Are the (Covid-19 Misinformation) Experts: A critical scoping review of expert meanings of ‘misinformation’ in the Covid era

Chaufan,

Hemsing,

Heredia

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These facts, we argue, go a long way in explaining academia as a new engine of medicalization, and deserve further research. Finally, there is the complex issue of perceived increasing "illiberalism" in academia raised by scholars across the ideological spectrum and attributed to different, even opposing, political ideologies (Chait, 2017;D'Souza, 1991;Furedi, 2022). This issue is also beyond the scope of our study but given the impact of current academic policies and practices on students' ability to express themselves freely, participate in open debate about matters of societal importance, and navigate differences, as identified in our study, it deserves to be explored.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In the name of health and illness: An inquiry into Covid-19 vaccination policy in postsecondary education in Canada (published https://researchandappliedmedicine.com/revistas/vol1/revista6/vacunacion-covid-ingles.pdf)

Chaufan¹,

Hemsing²

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since the launch of the Covid-19 global vaccination campaign in December of 2020, vaccination in postsecondary institutions has been a contested issue. International evidence indicates that these institutions have achieved high vaccination rates and Canadian public health agencies exclude them entirely from the list of institutions at risk of outbreaks. On the other hand, influential observers, and postsecondary institutions themselves insist that not only achieving, but also maintaining, “up-to-date” vaccination - through mandates if necessary – remains critical to contain the crisis. However, with the increasing recognition that vaccines do not stop viral spread, that young populations are at exceedingly low risk of severe Covid-19, hospitalization, and death - with a survival rate of over 99.98% - and that mandated medical interventions have a troubled history with repercussions to this day, the soundness of current vaccination policies in postsecondary institutions cannot be assumed. Drawing from the medicalization tradition and interpretive phenomenology, our study explores, through in-depth interviews, how vaccination policies within and beyond postsecondary institutions have shaped perceptions of the Covid-19 crisis, beliefs about the role, risks, and benefits of vaccination, and life choices and chances of students in Canada. We find that students largely comply with vaccination policies, whether by conviction, convenience, or coercion, and that the discourse and social practices promoted by the policies limit opportunities for free debate and exchange across vaccination statuses. Regardless of this status, students do resist, albeit very limitedly given the high cost of noncompliance. We discuss the implications of our findings for policy, equity, and for the power of medical social control in the Covid-19 era.

show abstract

“…Maybe with the rise of the "corporate university" (Giroux, 2009) academics have simply given up on the task of due epistemic diligence, i.e., competent and rigourous testing of knowledge claims and disputes (Hayward, 2022b), since their prestige and livelihood depends on ignoring this diligence? Perhaps academia is another example of what some scholars have alerted is the rise of "illiberal liberalism", a re-enactment of an old, bourgeois fear of public opinion (i.e., "the crowd") by a liberal, privileged class, overrepresented in academic circles (Furedi, 2022)? Maybe academics as a class "whose major function in the social division of labor [is the] reproduction of capitalist culture and class relations" (Press, 2019), overall benefit from official Covid-19 policy, hence have little motivation to confront it?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“You are not a horse”: Medicalization, social control, and academic discourse in the Covid-19 era

Chaufan¹

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since early 2020, public figures in government, medicine, public health, and academia have accused critics of official Covid-19 policy of subverting efforts to contain the crisis, by spreading “misinformation” leading to concerning levels of “vaccine hesitancy” or to the uptake of unproven, even dangerous, therapeutics. These accusations were compellingly captured in an August 2021 tweet from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “You’re not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it”, warning anyone considering or already consuming the antiparasitic drug ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19 that the drug could be “dangerous and even lethal” if used outside of the scope of FDA guidelines. In this study I examine the role of academic popularizing discourse in Covid-19 debates. Drawing from theories and methods that share a concern with how medical language and frames are deployed to control social behaviour, I appraise articles from The Conversation, an outlet that disseminates academic knowledge to facilitate open exchange and democratic governance. My analysis challenges the outlet’s self-presentation, suggesting instead that, in the Covid-19 era, far from contributing to its ostensible goals, The Conversation’s stigmatizing and condemnatory messaging is largely undermining them, with dire implication for the normative academic principles of open inquiry, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the promotion of critical thinking among younger generations.

show abstract

Illiberal Liberalism: A Genealogy

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

Trust Us - We Are the (Covid-19 Misinformation) Experts: A critical scoping review of expert meanings of ‘misinformation’ in the Covid era

Trust Us - We Are the (Covid-19 Misinformation) Experts: A critical scoping review of expert meanings of ‘misinformation’ in the Covid era

In the name of health and illness: An inquiry into Covid-19 vaccination policy in postsecondary education in Canada (published https://researchandappliedmedicine.com/revistas/vol1/revista6/vacunacion-covid-ingles.pdf)

“You are not a horse”: Medicalization, social control, and academic discourse in the Covid-19 era

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About